Bob & Orange

Fear of failure

2006-04-25T19:20:00.000+01:00

I was having a conversation with someone recently who wanted to try something new, but said it would be pointless to try because they'd just fail anyway. I'm not really a fan of this viewpoint. It always seems odd to me that people can work so hard to avoid failing that they never even try - and therefore never succeed, which, to me, is the biggest failure of all.

Take public speaking for example, it's probably the biggest fear of all. Yet the actual risk from public speaking is tiny. Just the fact that you may fail in public is enough to scare people even more than death. And because they are so scared of failing, they wont even try. Worrying so much about failing isn't entirely incorrect when you want to try something new, in all likelihood you will fail. A lot. The point isn't to avoid falling, it's to learn from those failures so that your next attempt has a higher chance of success. Even experts fail a lot of the time, the difference is they learn from it and move on.

To take this kind of thinking to the extreme, how long would you give your child to learn to walk? Maybe two months before you decided they can't do it and should give up? Six? One year? Of course you wouldn't, that's ridiculous. You'll want them to keep trying until they get it, no matter how long it takes. Which is why pretty much everyone on the planet can walk. I'm not saying that you should keep trying the same thing over and over again, that's just as silly as not trying in the first place. As Benjamin Franklin once said:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

If what you're doing isn't getting you any closer to your goal then try something else. What if that doesn't work? Then try sometimes else, and keep trying different things until you find something that does work. If you want to start up your own business, ask somebody out on a date or anything in-between - don't let fear of failure hold you back.

Hypnosis can obviously help with fear of failure, but a much cheaper way is to try following some advice from Steve Pavlina and fail on purpose. You'll save yourself some cash, and get to try some stuff you'd probably never have attempted otherwise.

If you just keep trying to avoid failure, you'll never achieve any real success.

Is conversational reframing ethical?

2006-01-21T16:33:00.000Z

A fair amount of the NLP topics I've been learning about can also be used in a conversational way, rather than in the usual therapist-client manner. Often referred to as 'Covert NLP'. I find this side of things pretty interesting, but I'm still unsure of how I feel ethically about using techniques like this without the other person giving consent beforehand.

If somebody came to see me as a therapist about something, then I'd be fine about using various techniques during conversation, because they've already given their consent indirectly when they came to see me. It's the everyday conversations with people I'm unsure about. The kind of stuff I'm talking about here is mostly just reframing, but in the style described in Mind Lines (which is a great book on conversational reframing).

Is it ok for me to try and influence someone to change a habit, such as giving up smoking? What about less harmful habits such as biting their nails?

Part of feels like it's ok to try and convince someone to change using normal methods (which pretty much comes down to argument), but that it's 'cheating' to use things like conversational reframing for this. But at the same time, I know that trying to get someone to change almost never works by arguing with them, and that what you really need to do is get them to see things in a different way - which is exactly what reframing is all about.

Hypnosis CDs for quiting smoking

2005-12-30T19:55:00.000Z

A lot of people try using hypnosis CDs to help them quit smoking, and it does work for some of them. A CD is a lot cheaper than going to see a Hypnotherapist in person, thanks to them being mass-produced (one of the better ones being Paul Mckenna's), which is probably one of the biggest things going for them. The problem is that it's also one of the biggest flaws. Being mass-produced also means they need to be fairly generic. The biggest benefit you get from going to see a Hypnotherapist in person is that the therapy will be specific for you. Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to stop smoking, so a generic therapy session such as you'd get on a CD isn't going to be as effective as one that focus on your own reasons for wanting to quit smoking (and fears about losing the benefits you get from smoking).

Even when it seems like the reasons are same, such as saving money, the reasons behind that will still be different. E.g. one person may want to save money to take the kids to Disney land, while somebody else may want to save money to pay of debts. The same goes for health, everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health - but that fact isn't usually enough of a reason for somebody to quit. It takes more than that, such as it becoming more 'real' to them when a family member becomes ill from smoking.

If you visit a Hypnotherapist in person they should be able to take your specific reasons (and the reasons behind them) for wanting to quit smoking and incorporate those into a comprehensive quit smoking session, or sessions, for you (there is still a lot more than just this, but it does play a big part). Basically one of the goals is to get your emotions involved, because it makes it so much easier to give up. As Doc Searls wrote a little while back:

Logic and reason sit on the mental board of directors, but emotions cast the deciding votes.

So if you try a hypnosis CD, and it doesn't work as well as you'd like, hypnotherapy still could help you give up smoking. Just do you best to choose a good Hypnotherapist, ideally a referral from a GP or a friend that has successful given up smoking with them already.

Hypnotherapy exam results

2005-12-18T16:47:00.000Z

As I mentioned previously I found out the results of the practical part of my exam on the day, but needed to wait for the results of the written exam. I have those results as well now and I passed with 73% Yay! I still think choosing to see if I could pass without doing any revision might have been the wrong choice though, because I would have undoubtedly done much better if I had.

Still a good result though, so I'm happy about that :-)

Learning hypnotherapy, final exam

2005-11-30T12:13:00.000Z

My final exam for hypnotherapy is over now. It was a pretty long day, starting off with a practical exam to demonstrate taking somebody into trance, some ego strengthening, then bringing them back to full awareness. As well as some 'mock' client issues to show how you would deal with a clients fears or misconceptions about hypnosis, the kind of details you would take for a case history and other things along those lines (basically everything you would cover in the pre-hypnosis interview-ish part).

The practical exam was followed by four written papers, during which I discovered that I don't actually have the ability to write anymore. Thanks to all my time using computers these days, I think this is the first time I've wrote more than a few words on paper for several years. The legibility of my writing seemed to deteriorate rapidly after a paragraphs or so. Hopefully it's all understandable.

I was a lot more confident about these papers before taking them, partly because I had decided to try and pass theses papers without any revision at all. If I do fail any of them, I'll be able to have a second attempt shortly afterwards (I did check this before hand) which I will revise for. I'll be a lot more pleased if I pass first time through.

I found out on the day that I passed the practical examination, and I'll get the results of the written papers in a few weeks. Fingers crossed.

How to have a panic attack

2005-11-10T13:45:00.000Z

Recently, I've been getting some practice in finding out 'how' people know to feel certain ways, e.g. how they know to be scared of spiders. I've been trying to get the process they go through to have that fear, rather than the reason that they belive they feel scared. This is going from the NLP-type view that the 'why' isn't all that important. It doesn't matter if somebody is scared of spiders because their parents are, because they found one in their food as a child, or whatever else they belive the reason is. The idea is, that if you can get the process they go through from being calm before seeing (or thinking about) a spider, to being afraid, then you can start to change it.

The biggest problem I've had with this, is being able to ask people the right kind of questions to get the type of answer that I'm looking for. People generally aren't aware of their internal thought process, it happens automatically so they don't pay any attention to it. I tried asking a friend of mine, who has a fear of water to the point of taking a panic attack, about the thought process he goes through to get from being calm to having a panic attack. Just thinking about it is enough to make him feel anxious, so it's a fairly strong response. At first, he was mostly saying things like "I just feel my heart speeding up" or "I just feel scared when I get near to it" - but after asking some strange questions I did manage to get him to describe the process he was going through in his mind. He said he imagines himself drowning in the water, seeing it from his own eyes as if he's actually in the water, and seeing the bubbles of air going up past his face to the surface. No wonder he manages to have a panic attack when he thinks about it in that way.

After getting the description of what he does mentally, it seemed like a good fit for a technique I first read about from one of Richard Bandler's books (I can't remember which one). The technique is to get the person to go through the thought process (in this case, it would be imagining the drowning) and as they're doing it, to turn the brightness right up for the pictures or movie in their mind - just like they would if it was on TV, so that it totally whites out. So they can't see anything apart from whiteness. Then go through the same process a few more times (5 being the recommend number), each time turning the brightness all the way up. The idea is that by doing this, you're effectively brain-washing yourself so that you can't play that internal movie in the same way again. When you try it'll just white out again. A blank white movie isn't enough to scare you or cause any anxiety, so no more fear or panic attacks.

The only downside in this case was that after I explained to my friend what I wanted him to do, he said he didn't like the sound of that, and that the whiteness would just be 'nothing' which might be even worse than what he has now. So I don't actually know if this technique would have helped in this case, but from what I've read of other peoples results they've been pretty successful. No doubt I'll get other chances to practice this kind of thing, but I thought it was an interesting response to not wanting to try it. At least he didn't just say "it wont work for me" :-)

"It wont work with me"

2005-11-02T22:47:00.000Z

Sometimes when people mention that they have a really bad phobia that causes problems in their life (such as being scared of heights, deep water, etc.) and I ask if they've considered hypnotherapy, they say something like "that wont work with me, so there's no point in trying". That response always seems really strange to me, if they've never tried it before how can they know it wont work? It doesn't take long to do it, so the effort required to try it is tiny. Usually I've offered to try and help for free as well, so the cost isn't an issue either.

I wonder if it's just people being scared to try hypnotherapy in general? Although I mostly use NLP techniques for working with phobias now, nobody has ever heard of that so I don't usually mention it (and I still use some hypnotherapy for ego-strengthening with whatever work I'm doing)

One of the people that said it wouldn't work did clarify that it's because she wasn't comfortable with it, so probably wouldn't do what I said. Which makes much more sense - it just bugs me when people say that it's pointless to try because they already know it wont work.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 10.2

2005-10-23T21:15:00.000+01:00

The last day of the course for me, all that's left to do now is the final exam next month. The topics we covered today seemed to be mostly variants of parts therapy (which we covered on weekend 3), nothing really stood out as being especially groundbreaking - but then I have been trying to learn as much as I can in my spare time as well. So towards the end of the course I'd already come across several of the techniques being taught on my own (especially with the NLP stuff). Most of the techniques covered today could also be used for 'content free' free therapy (so the client doesn't have to let you know what the problem is, all they have to do is think about it).

Across this course we've covered quite a few content free methods, but they've all seemed a bit too 'new age' to me. I guess it's the fact that they are so undirected that feels a bit odd to me, even though that's the point of them. I think it's the geek side of me which wants things to be a bit more focused. But if I do ever have a client who doesn't want to discuss what the problem is (which would be strange enough in itself, I think) then at least I'll be aware of these methods so I can try and help anyway. I just haven't had a need to use any of them yet.

Looking back over this course, I think the most useful things we've covered has been smoking, phobias and pain control. I suspect a lot of my work will be dealing with stopping smoking - it seems to be the first thing people think of when I've talked to them about hypnotherapy, and it could be thought of as the life saving part of all this (about 106,000 deaths each year because of smoking) so it's a very good thing to help with. I also find working with phobias and pain control to be pretty satisfying, and I'm still surprised at how well (and how fast) those things work.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 10.1

2005-10-12T21:44:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately I missed this day of the final weekend, but a lot of it was taken up with using hypnosis with children - which I don't expect I'll ever be doing, so it wasn't a big miss. Automatic writing was also covered on this day, which I was interested in. Thankfully, a couple of the other students took me though it. That's where you place a pen in someones hand while they're in a hypnotic state, and have them write/draw things without consciously choosing what to write or draw.

None of the results I saw from using this technique seemed to make much sense (although the people using it didn't really have any real problems to work with either). The idea is that it's supposed to make sense to the client (maybe not immediately, so it may take a few days to sink in), and that it'll help in some way with whatever problems they're trying to deal with. I doubt I'll use this technique in therapy myself, mostly because I don't really put much value in this one. But it's still an interesting idea, it just seems a bit of a strange way to go about things. There's always the chance I'll change my mind about this though, it wouldn't be the first time - and it definitely wont be the last.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 9.2

2005-09-17T22:02:00.000+01:00

Another specialist area for the start of the day today, this time it was depression. We spent a fair bit of time on this one (mostly because another of the students works a lot with depression), the end result is mostly to stay away from this area unless you go for more specialist training in the area first - and not to just try and treat anything directly. Because, unless you know what you're doing, you could make things worse. So if I do get any enquires for this type of work I can just refer them on to a therapist that does work in this area. Which is pretty much what I was planning on doing anyway.

After depression, we spent some time on IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), which I had a much better idea about after reading the series of articles that James Hamilton posted recently (starting with IBS: Introduction). A lot of the work we can do is this area is to help with confidence and self esteem for people suffering from this, as well as help with stress.

We ended the day with some Pseudo Orientation (age progression), which is basically the opposite of regression - taking them forward in time rather than back. You could use this type of thing with goal setting, so you can take them forward to a time when they've achieved their goal. Personally, I didn't really like the technique very much. I'm not really sure why though, but if it seems like it'll be helpful to a client then I'd definitely still use it.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 9.1

2005-09-11T22:06:00.000+01:00

Getting towards the end of the course now, we're spending more time covering specialist areas. Today started with alcoholism & excessive drinking, and the kind of ways hypnotherapy can help (and what not to do, such as not trying to get an alcoholic to go cold turkey). With most of the specialist areas, hypnotherapy is only really of use as part of a full care team - so you wouldn’t be dealing with type of thing on your own anyway. We also covered some more straight forward things today, such as snoring and insomnia. Insomnia is pretty straight forward to help with, but I was surprised to find that you may get people asking for help with snoring. Although the lecturers did say that they hadn't had many clients wanting help for that. Possibly because the person snoring isn't usually affected by it (apart from maybe the odd elbow in the ribs). You could help the partner of the snorer sleep better despite the snoring, which should be enough to let them get a decent nights sleep.

One of the biggest 'wow' moments on the course happened today, we were doing a mind-body disassociation technique - which basically turns off everything below your neck, as if you've been given an anesthetic. It's meant for use with some type of pain, for people that are bed-ridden and it a lot of pain. Using this technique you can put them into that state for a few hours, maybe for a visit from their facility etc. to give them some relief for a while. When it was being practiced on me, it felt very strange not being able to move any part of my body below my neck - I'm trying to tell my arm to lift up, but nothing is happening. It was pretty close to the feeling I've had in the past with sleep paralysis, but without the sleepy part. Very strange feeling indeed. Some of the people on the course decided to opt out of this one, because they didn't like the idea of not being able to move. Although, if I had needed to move (e.g. if there was a fire) then I'd still be able to move. I still don't fancy testing this one out thought :)

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 8.2

2005-08-22T20:50:00.000+01:00

It was the final batch of NLP on this course today. Unlike yesterday, we did cover some stuff that would be directly useful in therapy. The first was the swish pattern, this one went down pretty well. Even with the minor stuff we were using to practice this technique, quite a few people found they had a positive change because of it. I can see myself using the swish a lot for helping people break bad habits, and I'll probably incorporate it into my smoking cessation sessions.

We went through the 6 step reframe as well, which I found interesting, but it was presented as being almost the same thing as parts therapy (which we covered back on weekend 3), so most folks on the course didn't seem to find it very useful, instead just choosing to use parts work in hypnosis for this kind of thing.

Given that this was the final lot of NLP on the course, it's a bit of a shame we didn't go through the fast phobia cure. I find that one of the most useful NLP therapy techniques (and a very easy to use one), and I think we could have went into more detail on some of the things we did cover. But this is a hypnosis course after all, not an NLP one - so I should be looking for an NLP course if I want more of that kind of thing. Speaking of which, the ones Paul McKenna's company is running look like they could be pretty good, so I'm thinking about giving one of those a try sometime.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 8.1

2005-08-15T08:01:00.000+01:00

Another NLP weekend this one, I didn't find it as interesting as the last NLP weekend though. The topics we covered today felt a bit dull, I think that was mostly because none of the things we covered would be used to produce a change in therapy. They were things that would help, but they're not much use by themselves. We started the day with Congruity vs Incongruity, then moved onto to prosuppositions, well-formed outcomes and perceptual positions. All pretty useful things (and I'm a big fan of the NLP presuppositions), but I think the NLP jargon got in the way for a lot of people - thankfully with my day job being in IT, I'm already used to an overabundance of jargon and I've already learnt a bit about various NLP methods.

So for today, I thought the content was useful but the delivery of that content could have a been a lot better. We've got another NLP day tomorrow, which should be teaching more directly useful things as well - so maybe it'll go down better than this one.

Learning Hypnotherapy, weekend 7.2

2005-08-11T22:54:00.000+01:00

We had an introduction to Inner Child work today. It's based of the idea that to resolve issues which originate in your childhood, you need to connect with heal your 'inner child'. The reasoning behind this one doesn’t really fit with my beliefs, but it is useful for some people so that makes it a valuable technique. Obviously, in the classroom setting we're not going to be dealing with real problems - so we were just practicing fairly generic stuff. Even doing that, one of the students did get some fairly strong emotions back from her childhood. So much so in fact, that she ended up too emotionally drained to continue with the rest of the day, so she headed home early. I can't really see myself using this technique very much when doing therapy for real though, but it's still interesting.

We also briefly covered dealing with sexual abuse, not in any detail though - it was mostly just to say "if you want to work in this area, you're going to need lots of specialist training".

Something that I've started to notice recently in that the learning weekends don't seem to be as useful as they were at the start of the course. I suspect it's a combination of a couple of things. Firstly, we've mostly covered the big things that hypnotherapy is useful for, so we're dealing with smaller (and more specific) areas now. And secondly, in my out-of-course studying I'm already applying the things I've already learnt on the course to stuff that I'm reading about - so it doesn't feel like the things we're covering now are new to me. I've already come across them (or similar things) outside of the course. So recently I feel like I've been getting more out of just being there, even just to improve my focus in learning hypnotherapy by being there and to speak to the other folks on the course. But there's no reason to only speak to those people on school weekends, maybe I should try and get some regular meetings going for us to share ideas, etc.

Also, the end of the course is isn't far away, final exam is in November.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 7.1

2005-07-29T12:48:00.000+01:00

On this day of the course, most of the time was spent covering different therapy methods. Part of that involved watching a movie (called "The Gloria Tapes", sorry no link - can't find much info about it online) showing a woman, Gloria, visiting 3 different types of therapist. It was interesting seeing the 3 different types of therapy getting pretty close to same thing in the end, even though they started from completely different places. Gestalt therapy seemed the least therapy-like of them, I already knew it was more in-your-face than most other methods, but I didn't expect it to be quite as much as it was. Fritz Perls seemed to just argue with her for a bit, but he was getting results from it anyway :)

Paul McKenna, Sky One

2005-07-26T22:52:00.000+01:00

Paul McKenna's new show on Sky One is a total change from the norm for hypnosis on TV. It makes a refreshing change to see hypnosis being shown as a useful therapeutic technique, instead of just a way to get people to act like chickens and generally make a fool of themselves. Lots of people seem scared about hypnosis being some magic mind control thing that lets the hypnotist make them do whatever they want, which isn't really surprising given the way it's usually portrayed on TV. Hopefully this new show will help give people a better understanding about what it's really all about.

I was also surprised to see how much he makes of various NLP techniques when doing therapy. Given that he seems to be working with Richard Bandler these days I probably shouldn't be surprised. It still has a fair bit of showmanship, but then it is supposed to be entertaining TV after all.

Good NLP website

2005-07-03T17:22:00.000+01:00

I've recently come across a very useful NLP site, NLP Weekly. As well as having lots of interesting articles about various things about NLP and hypnosis, it also has pretty active forums as well. I've already found some of the stuff there useful for things I've been doing. Definitely worth a visit if you're interested in that kind of thing.

First use of Parts Therapy

2005-06-27T23:07:00.000+01:00

I had my first real use of parts therapy recently (it was covered at school back on weekend 3), the person I'd decided to try it with had said something like they "feel that some part of themselves is holding them back", so given their choice of words (and the context it was in) it seemed like a reasonable time to give parts work a go. I was surprised how well it ended up working, this person has a strong internal voice - for positive things, as well as criticizing themselves. But the negative voice would usually 'win' when they're thinking about how something is going to turn out, or to put a downer on something good that is happening.

During the parts therapy, I had him visualize the part that's holding him back in one hand, with the part that can help in the other hand. Then after a bit of internal negotiation, bring those parts together and back into himself (which all sounds very weird indeed, and that's the main reason I wasn't keen on parts work when I first learnt about it). Afterwards, he said he saw the negative 'part' as a ball of red light, and the positive one as a ball of blue light. Then when bringing them together, he ended up holding a ball of green light that he brought back into himself. He'd said the red ball was his way of visualizing the negative internal voice, and the blue ball was the positive one. And after integrating them together, the negative one shouldn't be 'wining' all the time anymore - and so things should be more balanced. Even though I'm pretty sure it'll have a good change of helping to deal with the issues we're trying to cover, I still find very, very, weird. I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually thought :)

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 6.2

2005-06-27T22:48:00.000+01:00

The second day of this weekend covered all kinds of things, although it was a little light on the practical sessions (only one of them). We spent a fair bit of time on Obstetrics, which makes sense given the interest in hypnotherapy for childbirth. The pain management we covered the day before would also come in very handy here. I doubt I'll be getting involved in any of that though, the childbirth side of things that is. It's not really my cup of tea - although still very useful for those folks that are interested in helping out in that area.

We also spent a bit of time on time distortion (which was also the practical we covered). It didn't seem very useful to me at first, mostly because I couldn’t think of a situation when I'd want to use it. When we went into more depth about it, it started to seem more useful - such as with helping sports performance (e.g. getting them to experience the event/game/whatever in slow-motion), or even just a simple case of making some boring task feel like it takes less time (the way things do when you enjoy them). And it can also be useful for some types of sexual problems, which we covered as well. Again, I can't really see myself using it very often, still interesting though. And I did say that about the weight control stuff when we first covered it, but I've been doing some of that after all so maybe I will get involved in this as well. Still a good weekend though, even if it is only the pain management stuff I end up having much use for.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 6.1

2005-06-16T20:45:00.000+01:00

Today was all about pain management, we spent some time discussing various methods for it using hypnosis. For the practical side of things, we covered glove anesthesia which I found pretty impressive. In a clinical setting, you would use it to remove all sensations of pain from the clients hand then get them to transfer that anesthesia (well, actually analgesia) to wherever their pain is - thus leaving that area pain free. For the practical, the analgesia was just transferred from one hand to the other, and tested by a firm twist of the skin on the back of the hand. It felt very strange being able to feel everything apart from the pain, although when the analgesia was transferred from my right hand to my left, it did leave my right hand stinging a bit from the skin twisting :) A very useful technique though, but I probably wouldn't use it very often. I wouldn't want to completely remove the pain. I'd be more likely to use something like replacing the painful feeling with one of warmth - so that the client would still know that the pain was there (and be able to notice if gets worse), it just wouldn't be as much of a burden to them. But obviously I'm not going to be doing any of those things unless their doctor has said it's ok - I wouldn't want to 'hide' someone's headache then find out it was really a brain tumor.

I've already tried a 'turning down' the pain method a little while ago for my friends mother, which went pretty well. I didn't check with her doctor first for that one, but she was already on the waiting list for an operation as well as taking pain killers for it. If I didn't already know her I would have definitely checked with her doctor first though.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 2.2

2005-05-27T21:59:00.000+01:00

Past life regression today, the 2nd part of the regression weekend from back in February (it was delayed due to heavy snow). It was a very interesting day, although surprising underwhelming. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I'd thought that being on the clients side for past life regression would be a lot more impressive than it turned out to be. I ended up going back to being a hunter with a bow & arrow going after deer in the forest, no idea where it was (although it looked Scandinavian with all the hills, trees & mountains). I didn't get much more information than that, but some of the other people in the class had experiences with a lot more information (names, places, etc.). It'll be interesting to see what happens when they try and find more information about those people, and if they really did exist.

I still don't believe in past lives though, and I doubt whatever the other folks in the class find when researching their past lives will change that. My thoughts in this area are just that it's your own brain making up a story that fits in with your current life - e.g. if you have a phobia of water, you might find out you died from drowning in a previous life. Some people would say that's why you have a phobia of water, but from my point of view it's the phobia of water that caused you to have that past life experience not the other way around. As for what my deer hunting was all about, I've got no idea :)

Thankfully whatever my beliefs about past life regression are, it doesn't change the potential therapeutic value they have. E.g. with the water phobia, some people may 'discover' that's why they were scared of water and then no longer be bothered by it. Not that I'm going to start using past life regression for everyone that comes to me with a phobia though :) Just that it might be an option if my other usual approaches don't have very good results.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 5.2

2005-05-23T00:49:00.000+01:00

More NLP on day 2 of this weekend, starting with 'eye accessing cues'. The theory is that by taking notice of the way somebody moves their eyes as they're thinking, you can work out how they are thinking. Which comes down to working out which rep systems (as mentioned previously) they're using as they're thinking.

We also covered, among a couple of things, anchoring. This one boils down to attaching a feeling (or 'resource' in NLP terms) such as confidence, haplessness, or anything else you might want to some stimulus, such as pressing your thumb and index finger together. In the same way that a specific song can make you feel a certain way (the song has been 'anchored' to that feeling), you can use the same principle to intentionally anchor any feeling you want. From a hypnotherapy point of view, anchoring can be useful for all kinds of thing - such as anchoring feelings of calmness to help with smoking cessation or stress management.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 5.1

2005-05-14T20:58:00.000+01:00

This weekend isn't really hypnotherapy at all - it's all about NLP. That's not a bad thing though, NLP is really useful and I've already used some of the techniques to get rid of phobias. Today, we were covering the raport building side of NLP. Such as mirroring & matching and representational systems. Building rapport is pretty important for helping any clients coming to you for hypnotherapy feel comfortable, if they don't then you'll have a very hard time getting anywhere - no matter how good you may be at the hypnosis side of things.

It felt very odd mirroring & matching in the practice sessions when the other person knew that's what what I was doing. It feels fine during everyday life practicing this kind of thing, when the other person isn't looking out for it. But in this kind of environment it's difficult not to just start laughing when somebody is matching you in such an obvious way. It's all good practice though, but I'll definitely need to practice this kind of thing more often in the real world.

One of the most difficult things I found was matching representational systems with somebody else. I'm fine with visual or auditory (and I'm even OK with olfactory [smell] and gustatory [taste] as well), but when it comes to kinesthetic I'm just rubbish. So trying to hold a conversation mostly using the kinesthetic rep system is very difficult, but that's something else I want to get more practice with in the real world as well. I also have the same kind of difficulty when coming up with hypnotherapy scripts that use any of the rep systems other than visual and audio. Thankfully I am getting better though.

Update: I realized I never bothered to mention how we were supposed to work out what rep system somebody else is using in the first place when you want to match them. The way were doing it today was by paying attention to the language they used when talking about something. If somebody says "I don't see how that would work" then they're probably using a visual rep system, so you'll want to explain it in a more visual way if you can - such as drawing a picture. Similarly, if you're using diagrams and pictures to explain something, and somebody says "that still doesn't sound like it would work" then they're probably using an auditory rep system, so you would want to switch strategies to something that fits better for that person.

Smoking again

2005-05-12T07:30:00.000+01:00

I've finally had my first failure with smoking cessation. I thought it would have happened before now - given that I'm only just starting out (and from what I've read & been told, doing it for free has a higher chance of not working as well). My friends mother, that I helped with some pain control recently, has started smoking again after having a couple of smoking cessation sessions. I've offered to do a follow up to deal with the parts she found difficult (and maybe try some aversion therapy as well). Hopefully, if she does decide to give it a go it'll be more successful this time.

Learning hypnotherapy, weekend 4.2

2005-04-17T19:03:00.000+01:00

At the start of each day, we've been doing group hypnosis - where one student puts the rest of the class into trance. It was my turn today. I felt more nervous that I thought I would be, but it seemed to go really well - and a few of the other students said it was one of the best ones so far. It does feel very odd sending 20 people off into trance at the same time, but it's all good practice for the future.

As well as abreactions being something that doing a hands-on course helps with (as I mentioned before), it also helps a lot with people getting 'stuck'. I.e. when you're waking them back up, but they just stay in trance. That would have probably made me think I'd broken them as well. The only time I've had anyone react that way so far has been during the group hypnosis - but for that student, it always takes a few attempts to bring her back, so at least I was expecting it :)

We also did some more on phobias - I found the positive phobia replacement technique we covered pretty good, and I can see myself maybe using that one to start with before the SUDS scale work I mentioned yesterday. It basically involves linking positive feelings to the phobic situation. During the practical, as the client, I went into fits of laughter as the other student was trying to bring back feelings of laughter to link to my 'phobia' (I don't have any phobias, so I tried something that mildly niggles me). I suspect if it was a real phobia I had, then I wouldn't have been quite so uncontrollable in my laughter :) but I do find it a lot easier to bring back positive feelings or emotions (such as laughing) than negative ones - so maybe it would have still worked just the same. Either way, it seemed to work for me.

The only negative part of this weekend was this afternoon. We were covering anxiety disorders. It was pretty much all just listening to the lecturers telling us stuff, and I found it difficult to concentrate. It might have just been down my mind wandering from the other ideas I'd had during the day, and lack of sleep last night, but I do prefer to have more interaction when I'm learning.